Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Good morning from me, and a good evening to you ;-)

Personally I wouldn't be so worried about whether these look the same or not. There are plenty websites out there that look the same, yet do wonderful business. That's because it doesn't really matter a jot what I think - because I'm a marketer not a customer. Okay, so I might be a customer some day, only if I were moving back to Asia, it wouldn't be HK. Much as I love the place.

Critique: Firstly, I like the tagline "easy come easy go". My first thought as to whether they look the same is are the same people (visitors) visiting your site. Even in a relatively small place like HK, it's unlikely that someone would need to visit all of the various sites - because of their needs. I have to admit to struggling with the Chinese, mine's rather limited ...

Now the first two sites are serving much the same niche, compare the approach of those two. As I say, the nuance of the language is lost on me, so this'll have to be up to you to tell me. What matters in each case is what your stats are telling you about your visitors. From your Google analytics, what are the differences between the three visitor groups? Where are they coming from and what questions are they asking that bring them to your various sites - and a very good thing to do is to ask those questions on your site then Google can see them on your headlines*.

In this age of javascript blocking, some serverside stats might just help you out. Not as informative but will give you an idea where people go. You could install a package from my mates in Amsterdam https://logaholic.com - it's the only dual website metrics that's on the market (that is to say, both serverside metrics and cookie-based counter). It's free and brings you excellent data about what your customers are doing. Google analytics is an excellent package (logaholic won't interfere, by the way - they can run parallel) only it is javascript (cookie) based. That means you'll be losing stats because of browser blockers. This is pretty technical, so if you can't get your head around this, don't worry too much. Pop the logaholic on board and see what happens, coz I'm going to give you a few ideas about what to do.

My favourite for information gathering about customers is the Google Display network. I use this myself, and if you look carefully you may even see my ad coz they're running in Hong Kong. Expensive though, but all good markets are. Make sure you've got the basic grounding even if you're hiring someone to do it for you because the information you'll get will be worth more to you then. Because this isn't just about getting traffic or leads, it's working out what part of your traffic is leads - and which isn't. Traffic's fine, but it's leads that make your business money.

Since you've sorted these websites yourself, you'll be able to adjust the copy (what's written on your websites) to meet the needs of those who are visiting. With Google advertising this process is incredibly fast. You'll be updating your website practically every week given your newly found knowledge about your customers. This will have two effects: firstly you'll have more effective websites for SEO (which is way slower to react) and you'll find out who you're really serving and meet their needs exactly. I guarantee you'll see a big difference in visitor stats within a month.

Another thought is that whilst this isn't on most peoples' wishlist, a newsletter wouldn't do you any harm. Visitors can sign up and you can send them a bi-monthly newsletter about what's going on.

You also have two Facebook 'likes' now ;-) Only don't go a bundle on getting lots of them, it's people pushing your doors open that make the difference in your business. Facebook's fine but it doesn't push open doors (their advertising is great for raising awareness though - try https://isfb4me.com ).

Does this get you any further? Any questions or thoughts pop them down right here. We'll get back to you.

*Google does not answer questions. It only gives you the best match to the terms your customers put in the box. That means if someone asks "I need more than self storage" they'll get lots of results for self storage despite their wanting more than that because Google picked up on "self storage" and returned results for that.

If the websites result in people contacting you for your services, then don't worry about the similarities. In the same people would be interested in your other offerings, then the similarities may actually be a branding benefit.

The similarity between sites is fine and really, I agree with Jay: the unified look and feel pulls your offerings together nicely.

What MAY serve you better is to have someone who is a native English speaker review the English language versions of your sites so that you sound more coordinated to your English speaking clients.

To generate additional credibility you MIGHT want to add extra sales-based elements such as video and testimonials to your respective home pages and offer additional ways for people to contact you: via e-mail, via phone, of to make an appointment for a consultation (or for a tour of your facility).

Good luck to you.